*New - links are now available to some of the plenary speaker's biographies. Please
see below.

For those of you planning on attending this conference, the links below should offer
some helpful information.

Learn About USC- This site will give you information on the history of the University of South Carolina,
the University's mission statement, University Highlights as well as other interesting
and important facts and achievements.

Weather in Columbia, SC- Just enter in our zip code, 29208, for the current weather as well as averages,
rainfall and projected forecasts. In March, Columbia's average high is 71° and the
average low is 47°.

Finding Buildings on Campus- Just type in the building or department you want and select search. You will see
a campus map with Cocky, the USC Gamecock mascot, pointing to the building you selected.

If you have any questions concerning conference registration, hotels, or any information
on this website, please emailcomplit@gwm.sc.edu

Call for Papers

Sponsored by the Departments of Languages, Literature, and Cultures, Philosophy, and
Political Science

Plato is in many ways a very contemporary author. The Platonic texts and the traditions
they initiate remain at the center not only of analytic and continental philosophy,
but are also founding moments in the history of political and literary theory, aesthetics,
poetics, rhetoric, and law. In numerous dialogues, Plato revealed himself to be a
literary craftsman of the highest caliber with a flair for dramatic presentation and
psychologically refined portraiture. All of these factors combine to make Plato and
Platonism endlessly rich resources calling for continuous exploration, interpretation,
and a broad interdisciplinary perspective to do justice to the various texts and contexts
in which Plato has had and continues to have a formative impact. In this spirit, the
University of South Carolina announces an international and interdisciplinary conference
on Plato and Platonisms from antiquity through the Middle Ages and Renaissance to
the present.

In addition to these plenaries, there will be panels exploring the development of
Platonic tradition(s), Plato and his predecessors, literary aspects of Platonic dialogues,
the reception of Platonism, Aristotle and Plato, Middle Platonism, and Neoplatonism.
To this end, we invite papers that explore particular Platonic dialogues, themes across
dialogues, works of authors claiming or disavowing a debt to Plato, as well as studies
on other topics that touch on any of the myriad manifestations of Plato’s influence.
In particular, we desire papers that pinpoint a connection, anchor it explicitly in
Plato and show us how a certain motif, idea, doctrine etc. is a 'Platonism', rooted
in a tradition and founded on a dialogue with Plato. We also invite papers that problematize
the very traditions in which we have been trained to read Plato. What are they? Where
are they located? How are they constituted? To what extent do they dictate our response
to Plato and to what extent do they provide the means to think differently?

250 word proposals for twenty-minute papers, or 750 word proposals for three paper
panels, should be sent topamiller@sc.edubySeptember 1, 2007.